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> Celtic Australia, A History
Angel Whitefang (Rider) 
Posted: 12-Jun-2004, 07:47 PM
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LINKS TO RECORDS OF IMMIGRATION TO AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND.

http://www.pcug.org.au/~kenblair/immrec.htm



This is a very interesting article thought I would share it with you




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FIVE SHIPLOADS: HOW SOME IRISH PIONEERS CAME TO AUSTRALIA
Dr Bernard Barrett
1. Exiles from County Donegal
Australia's pioneering Irish immigrants came here under a variety of circumstances. This article will focus on migrants from the north-western corner of Ireland (County Donegal) to one Australian colony (New South Wales) in the 1850s and '60s but it may help readers to understand some of the dimensions of the Irish-Australian experience in general.

County Donegal has always been regarded as one of the most 'remote' parts of Ireland. Indeed, lashed by the Atlantic ocean, Donegal is on the extreme fringe of Europe. Donegal's population in the 1850s, especially in the coastal areas, was largely Gaelic-speaking. Even today the coastal districts of Gweedore and Cloughaneely are officially classified as Gaeltacht (Irish-speaking areas).

In the 1850s there was much distress in rural Donegal. Many families could not eke a living from their tiny plots of land. Under the British landlord system, the native inhabitants had to pay rents, and any who could not keep up the payments were liable to be evicted. A common solution was emigration, mostly to Britain or America but sometimes to Australia.

After about 1855, some of these emigrants were taking advantage of the New South Wales assisted immigration scheme. Under this, residents of New South Wales could pay a contribution to the government in Sydney to bring out a relative or friend from Britain or Ireland, with the government subsidizing the cost of the passage. As the immigrants of 1855 became established in New South Wales, many sent sums of money (ranging from 5 pounds to 50 pounds) back to Donegal to help their relatives to survive or to emigrate. I have recently met people in New South Wales whose ancestors were among these Donegal migrants of 1855.

By 1858, there was mounting concern in Australia about news of increased suffering in Donegal. Landlords were reported to be squeezing Donegal people off the land to make way for more profitable farming procedures or to clear the land for more profitable pursuits such as large-scale sheep-raising, using Scottish shepherds. Clearly there was a need for more help from Australia.

2. The Donegal Relief Fund
In May 1858 a Catholic clergyman, Archdeacon John McEncroe, convened a public meeting in Sydney to form a Donegal Relief Fund. McEncroe, aged 64, was from County Tipperary. He had been in New South Wales for 26 years, watching it evolve from a jail-farm to a colony of free settlers. He was the founder of a periodical newspaper, the Sydney Freeman's Journal. The development of the Donegal Relief Fund may be traced in that paper.

McEncroe sought to make systematic use of the government's assisted immigration scheme. His correspondence and interviews with the government may be traced in reports that were later tabled in Parliament (printed as the Proceedings of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly, 1861-2). According to those documents, McEncroe took a deputation from the Donegal Relief Fund to interview government officials in July 1858. McEncroe gave the government a deposit of 900 pounds, and the government issued a certificate providing passages for 225 people. This special fare to Australia was five pounds per male and three pounds per female. McEncroe made subsequent deposits, bringing the total for 1858 to 3,800 pounds, and the government issued further certificates for passages.

The certificates were issued for persons aged between twelve and forty years. These age restrictions meant that many Irish families were to be torn apart, with older adults and younger children being forced to stay in Ireland.

The Donegal Relief Fund had an agent in Ireland named J.H. Scott Durban. He compiled a list of emigrants who were to be sponsored by the fund. These were chosen chiefly from the districts of Gweedore and Cloughaneely. These were among the most impoverished parts of Ireland. Archdeacon McEncroe, who visited this region in the late 1850s, considered that the agricultural labourers of Gweedore and Cloughaneely had a more miserable existence under the landlord system there than the convicts had experienced under the landed proprietors of New South Wales.

The Donegal Relief Fund also selected some migrants from Tory Island (a Gaelic-speaking community situated thirteen kilometres off the Donegal coast), some from other parts of Donegal and a few from neighbouring counties. The migrants were to travel to Britain and then by sailing ship to Australia.

3. The first four ships
The first batch of Donegal Relief Fund migrants arrived in Sydney from Liverpool in the Sapphire (a ship of 749 tons) on 24 May 1859 after a voyage of 110 days - 15 weeks. The vessel landed 286 passengers (not all sponsored by the Donegal Relief Fund). The sexes were evenly balanced, there being 138 males and 133 females over 12 years, plus eight boys and seven girls under 12 years. They included 42 married couples. There had been four deaths on the voyage, comprising two infants, one young girl and one woman. Two babies were born on the voyage.

A report in the Sydney Morning Herald complained that the passengers could not speak English but the ship's captain replied in the Herald, stating that most spoke English well. The Sydney Freeman's Journal said that 'all the men speak English, more or less perfect, and of the females there are only eleven who cannot do so.'

The second batch of Donegal Relief Fund migrants traveled on the Lady Elma Bruce (966 tons), reaching Sydney from Liverpool on 14 July 1859 after a voyage of 98 days. Because there had been several cases of measles during the passage, the vessel was quarantined in Sydney Harbour for two weeks before being allowed to land passengers. In those days, measles were a dangerous disease. The vessel landed 318 passengers, mostly Irish, including 258 sponsored by the Donegal Relief Fund. There had been one death (a female over 12 years) and two births. The D.R.F. passengers comprised 24 married couples, 94 single men, 91 single women, 15 young boys, seven young girls and three infants.

The third batch traveled on the Caribou (1065 tons), arriving in Sydney from Liverpool on 4 October 1859 after a voyage of 92 days. The ship landed 388 passengers, chiefly for the D.R.F. The 388 comprised 174 men, 168 women, 19 young boys and 27 young girls. They included 45 married couples. There had been three deaths (two boys and a man) and six births.

The arrival of each Donegal Relief Fund ship was reported in the Sydney Freeman's Journal, which recommended the passengers to prospective employers as farm labourers or domestic servants. The New South Wales government encouraged the immigrants, especially the men, to go to 'immigrant depots' in country centres (for example, Maitland, Newcastle and Bathurst), from where they would be hired by landholders.

The Donegal Relief Fund enormously boosted the number of Irish migrants to New South Wales in 1859. According to parliamentary reports, 3,723 immigrants entered New South Wales that year from all sources under government's assistance scheme. Of these, the Irish accounted for 2,544 - that is, more than 68 per cent of the total. The other comprised 941 English (more than 25 per cent) and 238 Scottish (more than 6 per cent). Of the Irish, about one third came under the D.R.F. scheme.

The Donegal Relief Fund continued to raise money during 1860 but sponsored no migrants that year. It asked the New South Wales government for permission to bring more migrants in 1861, and gave the government 1,350 pounds.

The fourth batch of D.R.F. migrants ( 166 persons, largely from Gweedore) traveled on the Nile, arriving in Sydney on 16 may 1861. (The passenger lists of these four D.R.F. ships are all in the New South Wales Archives - microfilms no. 2479 and 2139.

4. The missing village of Derryveagh
The services of the Donegal Relief Fund were again called for after a whole village in County Donegal became homeless in 1861. The village was Derryveagh, situated in central Donegal on the western shore of Gartan Lough, about 25 kilometers inland from the Gweedore/Cloughaneely coast. In the late 1850's Derryveagh and several adjoining estates (Glenveagh and Gartan) had been bought by a new landlord, John George Adair, of Queens County. Adair soon clashed with the native inhabitants of Derryveagh, and in April 1861 he evicted forty-seven families, almost the entire population of the estate. He used a force of two hundred policemen to carry out the evictions and to demolish the cottages. Altogether, about 250 people (half of them 'children of tender age') were thrown out on to the roadside in cold, wet weather.

The news of the Derryveagh evictions caused a stir in Australia, where Donegal relief was now a major concern. Money for the Derryveagh victims was raised in both Sydney and Melbourne as well as in other parts of Australia. The Sydney effort was still headed by Archdeacon McEncroe, while a member of the Victorian parliament named Michael O'Grady (from County Roscommon) was prominent in the Melbourne fund-raising.

So, in January 1862 a group of Derryveagh people sailed from Dublin to England, and then to Australia, through the Donegal Relief Fund. But what part of Australia? One of the best known accounts of the Derryveagh evictions was by A.M. Sullivan, an Irish member of the British Parliament, in Chapter 19 of his book, New Ireland, published in 1877. Sullivan said, rather misleadingly, that the D.R.F. was based in Melbourne, headed by Michael O'Grady. Sullivan said that, thanks largely to Victoria's O'Grady, the Derryveagh people were happily re-settled in their new land. Sullivan neglected to mention McEncroe's Sydney fund-raising. Later writers have been influenced by Sullivan's version and have left their readers with the impression that Derryveagh was transplanted wholly in Victoria.

Interest in the fate of the Derryveagh people has revived in the 1980s because landlord Adair's former home (the Glenveagh estate, adjoining the Derryveagh estate) is now being developed as a major national park. In 1983 I received letters from contacts of mine in Ireland, asking if I could find out what became of Derryveagh 'in Victoria'.

5. The fifth ship
I began by obtaining a list of the forty-seven families evicted in Derryveagh, published in the Irish press in 1861. The recurring surnames were Armstrong, Bradley, Burke, Callaghan, Coll, Conaghan, Coyle, Curran, Dermott, Devenny, Doherty, Doohan, Friel, Gallagher, Kelly, Lawn, McAward, Moore, O'Flanigan, Rodden and Sweeney.

I found no significant cluster of these surnames in the Victorian shipping records of the 1860s, but a search of the New South Wales shipping records in Sydney revealed that dozens of Derryveagh migrants were on the Abyssinian (a ship of 1070 tons), which arrived in Sydney from Plymouth on 29 May 1862 after a voyage of 114 days. The ship's passenger list, completed in Sydney after the voyage, is preserved in the New South Wales State Archives (microfilm no. 2139). The Archives also contain the ship's embarkation list, compiled in Plymouth. According to these documents, the Abyssinian landed 404 immigrants, mostly Irish and mostly unmarried. They included 150 sponsored by the Donegal Relief Fund. The D.R.F. passengers who boarded in Plymouth comprised 68 single men, 70 single women, four married couples and four infants.

There were seven deaths during the voyage, comprising three adults and four infants. Two of the deaths were from bronchitis, two from pleurisy and the others from convulsions, diarrhoea and consumption. Three babies were born during the voyage.

Most of the surnames involved in the Derryveagh evictions of 1861 are well represented on the passenger list, including clusters of each of the following: Armstrong, Bradley, Coll, Conaghan, Coyle, Curran, (Mac)Dermott, Doherty, Friel, Gallagher, Lawn, Rodden, Sweeny and Ward. In addition, there are several dozen other passengers, with different surnames, who cited localities in the Derryveagh district as their birthplace. The handwriting and spelling of many of the birthplaces are unclear but I calculate that perhaps two dozen of the males and two dozen of the females on the Abyssinian came from the Derryveagh district. The remaining Donegal Relief Fund passengers came from Gweedore and Cloughaneely, from other parts of Donegal and from surrounding counties.

The Donegal Relief Fund did not confine its aid to one religious denomination. Under the heading of 'Religion', most D.R.F. passengers on the Abyssinian (especially from Gweedore, Cloughaneely and the Derryveagh area) are listed as 'R.C.', but a significant minority of D.R.F. passengers (from other parts of Donegal) are listed as 'C. of E.' and two as 'Presbyterians'.

The D.R.F. passengers on the Abyssinian were almost all unmarried people, aged between eighteen and twenty-five years. What became of their parents? And their younger brothers and sisters, aged under 18? Did they remain in Ireland? Did they come to Australia later as individual passengers, using money sent home by the emigrants of 1862? Or did they obtain cheaper fares to less remote destinations such as England or America?

After the Derryveagh evictions, residents of the neighbouring Cloughaneely district provided some temporary shelter. According to a tradition in Cloughaneely today, huts for the victims were built near the coast in Killult, a townland on Ballyness Bay near the village of Falcarragh. It would be interesting to know whether any descendants of the Derryveagh victims are still living in Cloughaneely today, but I presume that the biggest numbers of descendants would now be outside Donegal and outside Ireland.

It is interesting that, of the twenty-four married couples on the Abyssinian, only four were sponsored by the Donegal Relief Fund. Of these four D.R.F. families, two evidently came from birthplaces near Derryveagh. One of these couples, James and Mary Doherty, lost an infant daughter, Biddy, who died during the voyage. The other couple, Teague and Hannagh Gallagher, gained a baby son, born during the voyage.

The New South Wales State Archives also contain other papers relating to the Abyssinian, showing where each passenger obtained employment and lodgings. Most of the unmarried women obtained positions as servants in and around Sydney. Most of the males went to country areas as farm labourers. The places listed include Maitland and Singleton (both north of Sydney), Bathurst (in the west) and Berrima, Wollongong and Kiama (all in the south). As the men were now scattered around (and as many could not read or write), they would have found it difficult to maintain contact with each other.

In 1983, after much 'detective work', I located the graves of three of the Abyssinian passengers. James and Mary Doherty are buried at Welby cemetery, near Mittagong, N.S.W. (This is only ten kilometres from Berrima, where, according to the Abyssinian documents, James began working as a farm labourer in 1862.)James and Mary died in 1912 and 1927, aged 84 and 94 respectively. Nearby is the grave of their son, John Doherty, who was two when he arrived on the Abyssinian; he was 74 and he died in 1934. The headstones of these graves are in good condition, with clear inscriptions.

In 1983 I also located and interviewed a daughter of John Doherty. She is Enid Doherty, born in Australia in 1908, now Mrs Taylor, living in Westmead, near Parramatta, Sydney. John Doherty had three sons; these are now dead but their descendants, whom I have contacted in Sydney, tell me that James Doherty on the Abyssinian was one of seven brothers; the other six went to the United States. John Doherty, the two-year-old on the Abyssinian, spent many years as a builder in the outback mining town of Broken Hill, N.S.W.

The Derryveagh exiles of 1862 must have many descendants living in Australia today, including some perhaps living in states other than New South Wales.?

6. Further research
There is scope for other researchers to take up the investigation of the Donegal Relief Fund. For example, I have not ascertained whether the D.R.F. was active in Sydney after 1862 but I know that clusters of Donegal immigrants reached Sydney in later ships, including the Peerless in 1863 and the Montmorency and Montrose in 1864.

The Donegal Relief Fund was not unique. Several similar schemes catered for emigrants from other parts of Ireland in the 1860s. One such fund operated from Brisbane, Queensland, headed by two Irish Catholic clergymen, Bishop James Quinn and Father Patrick Dunne. The first of these ships to Queensland was the Erin-go-bragh in 1862, followed by nine others. Someone remarked that so many Irish migrants went to Queensland under the auspices of Bishop Quinn that the colony could well be re-named 'Quinn's Land'.

[The author gratefully acknowledges research assistance from Mrs Barbara Geary of Canberra, A.C.T. and Mrs Edith Meredith of Bringelly, N.S.W.]

"Republished with kind permission of Dr Bernard Barrett"


To read more articles in the "From Donegal to Australia" series visit http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~d...egal/relief.htm.

ABOUT THE IRISH RECORDS
READ THE PRESS RELEASE
IRISH ARTICLES IN ATAVUS

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ARTICLES FROM PREVIOUS EDITIONS
THE STUDY OF GENEALOGY IN IRELAND
THE GENEALOGICAL OFFICE, DUBLIN CASTLE
IRISH PEERS AND THE HOUSE OF LORDS

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IRISH EXTERNAL LINKS
IRISH CASTLES AND HOMES


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Scots around the world
Australia

Contributed by Mel Stevenson
Australia was fortunate in having a great many Scottish immigants many of whom went on to play a large part in the early formation of the colony. They came from several sources ie the convicts and political prisoners, the service men, some of the early naval and army personel were Scottish, the free immigrants who came to better their life style, these also included those who paid their own way and those who were inticed by free passage in exchange for their labour for a certain period of time and the business men who came here as traders etc.

There was a minister of religion who was instumental in bringing large bodies of Scottish immigrants to Fortitude Valley in Brisbane Queensland around 1850's. Some of these were orphans who were given positions as maids and domestic staff. It was difficult at that time to get good workers particularly for some of the inland properties. All the early settlers came by ship and conditions were pretty bad, many succumbed to diseases on the way over. There are many stories like the one about Thomas Stevenson( no relation)a shepherd from Ayr who came via New Zealand and went on to own a very large property in Boorowa New South Wales. He built up one of the finest flock of Merino sheep in Australia and was well known for improving the breed. He won many prizes for his livestock. He never forgot his homeland though, he sent money home to pay for his mothers headstone and in his will he left money to his widowed sister still living in Ayr. I researched his interesting life for a descendant over there a few years ago and even went to Borrowa to take photos of his grave for her, I think he is a good example of many of the early Scottish migrants to Australia. He came from humble beginnings, he came to work and he stayed because he found opportunities for anyone who was prepared to work hard but he never forgot his homeland.

Find out More
http://www.electricscotland.com/history/wo...d/australia.htm
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Here is another site that I found very informative for looking up Ship Logs.
http://olivetreegenealogy.com/ships/toausp01.shtml

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Chapter 18: Scots Down Under

In addition to Canada, Australia and New Zealand, countries referred to in Britain as "down under" profited enormously from the arrival of Scottish immigrants. Though a great deal of the influence their forbears had on the development of the country has been subsumed under the title British, in the 1990's, almost 14 percent of white Australians claim Scottish descent.

For most of the 18th century, even after the Act of Union in 1707, so much of Scotland's national character, unique social structure (especially in the Highlands) and its economic regionalism survived intact. By the time of the period of emigration, one hundred years later, there had been a great acceleration in Scotland's political, economic and social assimilation into that of Britain as a whole. Scottish attitudes towards the colonies, trade and emigration still differed remarkably from the English. The Scots highly deserve their place of honor in the roll of those who did so much to develop Australia and New Zealand into prosperous, modern states whose sobering influence has added so much to the world in general.

As they did in Canada, the Scots had an enormous influence upon the lands they settled "down under." They filled positions of authority in just about every enterprise they put their minds to. Scotland's loss was the colonies' gain. Their energy, imagination and sheer know-how guided them well in their new homes overseas.

Following the peace of 1815 at the end of the Napoleonic Wars, there was a great increase in the population of the British Isles, so much, so that a feeling of alarm spread through government ranks. A growing population, which had before been regarded as one of the nation's strengths now found itself, looked on as something of a curse. There were simply too many people to feed (and control). Increasing pauperism and distress, along with monstrously bad harvests, massive unemployment and public debt severely strained the limited resources available. Therefore, the folks at Westminster sought drastic remedies.

Perhaps the easiest remedy was emigration. In 1822 James Mills' article on "Colonization" in the "Encyclopedia Britannica" offered emigration as a solution for over-population. It was eagerly read and avidly discussed by M.P.'s such as Robert Horton, who spent quite a few years of his life in the House of Commons trying to convince his colleagues of the merits of his emigration schemes. In the years 1823-25, attempts were made to put his plans into practice, especially because the Government wished to settle British people in new lands that could be contested by other nationalities. Though most of the emigrants chosen for government-assisted passages in these early years were Irish (one way to get rid of those troublesome Catholics) many Scots were attracted by the offers of free land overseas.

Despite its reputation as a penal colony, in the very early years of the 19th century, Australia had begun to appear more and more as a practical proposition for settlement (only three percent of the deported convicts had been Scottish). After the United States had won its independence, Australia slowly began to offer an alternative to the vast wildernesses of loyalist Canada. Attitudes in Parliament began to shift with the publication of Captain Alexander McConochie's recommendation that Britain should look to the Pacific Ocean to expand its commerce. He particularly advocated a settlement of New South Wales that would open up new markets as well as absorb what he termed Scotland's "superabundant population." McConochie's "A Summary View" of 1818 gave the people of power in Scotland, especially those with commercial interests, an awareness of the potential awaiting them in Australia.

Although Tasmania (Van Dieman's Land) was the main destination of the first Scottish emigrants, many also went to New South Wales. The populations of both colonies rose by one third during the 1820's. The advantages of both countries had been published in 1822 in the first book produced in Scotland to deal specifically with Australia, Captain James Dixon's "Narrative," an account of his voyages on the "Skeleton." "If a man must emigrate," he wrote, "Australia is the best quarter he can choose." Of more influence however, was the 1827 publication of Scotsman Peter Cunningham's "Two Years in New South Wales." He painted a picture that was irresistible to many -- a free land with available unpaid convict labor, where a staple export, merino wool, was already developing rapidly.

To Read the rest of this Article please visit this site.

http://www.britannia.com/celtic/scotland/scot19.html


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Welsh Culture in Australia

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The Welsh experience in Australia tends to confirm the view that the Welsh language is a salient feature of Welsh ethnicity. A high proportion of nineteenth century Welsh immigrants spoke Welsh as their first language, including some who spoke only Welsh. As late as 1886, when the Brisbane Cambrian Society successfully requested that the Queensland agent-general in London appoint a Welsh-speaking lecturer, more than half of the Welsh population still spoke Welsh. Immigrants from Wales brought to Australia a popular culture that was expressed through the Welsh language and was rooted in Nonconformism. In this sense, language and religion were inextricably bound together.

In Australia as in Wales, the leaders and patrons of the Welsh communities were also drawn largely from the ranks of chapel ministers or deacons. They were the ones who organised the Cymanfaoedd Canu, the great hymn-singing festivals that are so closely linked with the idea of Wales. In the 1860s and 1870s, the heyday of Welsh settlement in Victoria, it was not unusual for a Cymanfa Canu in Ballarat to last for several days and to draw crowds of 800 or more.


These grand assemblies and many other lesser occasions were invariably organised by the churches. Bewildering in their variety, these occasions are recorded in meticulous detail in the Australydd and other Welsh journals ofthe day- Cyfarfod Te (Tea Meeting), Gobeithlu (Band of Hope), Seiat (Fellowhip Meeting), Cyfarfod Pregethu (Preaching Assembly) and Cymdeithas Lenyddol (Literary Society). To these weekday obligations must be added the rigours of the Nonconformist Welsh Sunday-the prayer meeting for the young in the morning, the morning sermon to follow, Sunday School in the afternoon, the singing meeting at 5 pm and the evening sermon to conclude the day. They were attended in the main by men exhausted from long hours of labour on the diggings or down in the mines.


Of the cultural institutions brought by the Welsh to Australia, it is the Eisteddfod, and the choral singing tradition with which it is associated, that has proved to be the most enduring. A legacy of the late eighteenth century Welsh cultural regeneration, the modern Eisteddfod takes the institutional form of a festival of literary and musical competition. In Australia it had its beginnings in the literary societies that were an early feature of the Welsh cultural scene in Ballarat in the mid-1850s. The first recorded literary gathering (Cyfarfod Llenyddol) took place in that city on Christmas Day, 1855, and by 1857 a Ballarat Welsh Literary Society had been founded. Its activities, of which some record survives, were conducted entirely in Welsh.


By 1863 these proceedings had evolved into a fully fledged Eisteddfod to which, the Australydd tells us, the Welsh of Victoria flocked. Such was its popularity that it quickly gained the status of a 'national' Eisteddfod and, like its counterpart in Wales, rotated annually between several of the larger Victorian towns, including Castlemaine and Melbourne. Yet, like the Welsh periodicals that assiduously reported its program, the Victorian national Eisteddfod was to be short-lived. The last of these events was celebrated in Ballarat in 1869; thereafter, the Eisteddfod in Victoria was principally a local affair. By the 1870s, however, Welsh communities elsewhere in Australia were also holding Eisteddfod activities, although the anglicisation of their proceedings was already in evidence. Yet acculturation was not entirely one-directional, for the modern Australiawide Eisteddfod movement derives from these Welsh beginnings. The Ballarat South Street festivities and the City of Sydney Eisteddfod have, over the years, developed into well-recognised breeding-grounds for talent in music and the arts.


Inevitably perhaps, the assimilation of a geographically dispersed and numerically small Welsh population proceeded apace, with the ageing of a Welsh-speaking first generation who were unable, in the absence of institutional support outside the home, to transmit its values to the second generation. Clearly these values, in Australia as in Wales, were held together by the bond of the Welsh language. As early as 1877 Joseph Jenkins, the Welsh swagman, spurned the Ballarat Eisteddfod because of the predominantly English content of its programs. Similarly, the Welsh-language journals of Victoria -- Yr Australydd and its successor Yr Ymwelydd -- repeatedly bemoaned the rapid assimilation and secularisation of the Welsh in the Australian colonies but themselves fell victims to these forces by the end of the 1870s.


The trend was also visible in the churches. The Welsh Baptists in Australia disappeared as an independent denomination at a very early stage, and well before the end of the century the other denominations had introduced English into their services (English sermons often alternated with Welsh). As in Wales, there were those who sought to stem the English tide by calling for the establishment of a Welsh 'colony", in the belief that Welsh cultural integrity hinged on the possession of a territorial base. Editorials in the Australydd encouraged its readers to found a colony on the Patagonian model and several correspondents suggested suitable localities in Australia and New Zealand. Although approaches were made to the Lands Office, these plans were eventually aborted as the general response from the Welsh community was unenthusiastic.


At the root of this cultural erosion was the desertion of the younger generation indifferent to older values and drawn by peer-group pressures to mainstream culture. In the assimilationist climate of the day, only a steady flow of immigrants from Wales could have compensated for this. But between 1891 and 1947 the number of Welsh-born in Australia stagnated. By the time planned post-War immigration was under way, the threads of continuity with nineteenth century Welsh life had been largely broken. By that time too the proportion of Welsh-speakers amongst the migrant intake from Wales had been greatly reduced.

http://www.lamp.ac.uk/oz/hughes/welshcul.html
There are many more links on this site, go check it out



This Is some of the most facinating stuff I have read in a long time, I am sure many of you would call this dry & Boring but I enjoy it and wanted to share.

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Lyra Luminara 
Posted: 27-Jun-2004, 10:28 PM
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...my mom's last name is barrett. haha, I might just be a distant relation to the writer of the first article,


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If we could just stand here, without the words, would that be enough? ..Look at the sky now. What color is it? Or the way a hawk flies. Or you wake up and your ribs are bruised thinking so hard on somebody. What do you call that?


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QUOTE (Angel Whitefang (Rider) @ 12-Jun-2004, 08:47 PM)
LINKS TO RECORDS OF IMMIGRATION TO AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND.

http://www.pcug.org.au/~kenblair/immrec.htm



This is a very interesting article thought I would share it with you




copyright 2004
Burke's Peerage & Gentry.
contact the webmaster



The Genealogy Register

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FIVE SHIPLOADS: HOW SOME IRISH PIONEERS CAME TO AUSTRALIA
Dr Bernard Barrett
1. Exiles from County Donegal
Australia's pioneering Irish immigrants came here under a variety of circumstances. This article will focus on migrants from the north-western corner of Ireland (County Donegal) to one Australian colony (New South Wales) in the 1850s and '60s but it may help readers to understand some of the dimensions of the Irish-Australian experience in general.

County Donegal has always been regarded as one of the most 'remote' parts of Ireland. Indeed, lashed by the Atlantic ocean, Donegal is on the extreme fringe of Europe. Donegal's population in the 1850s, especially in the coastal areas, was largely Gaelic-speaking. Even today the coastal districts of Gweedore and Cloughaneely are officially classified as Gaeltacht (Irish-speaking areas).

In the 1850s there was much distress in rural Donegal. Many families could not eke a living from their tiny plots of land. Under the British landlord system, the native inhabitants had to pay rents, and any who could not keep up the payments were liable to be evicted. A common solution was emigration, mostly to Britain or America but sometimes to Australia.

After about 1855, some of these emigrants were taking advantage of the New South Wales assisted immigration scheme. Under this, residents of New South Wales could pay a contribution to the government in Sydney to bring out a relative or friend from Britain or Ireland, with the government subsidizing the cost of the passage. As the immigrants of 1855 became established in New South Wales, many sent sums of money (ranging from 5 pounds to 50 pounds) back to Donegal to help their relatives to survive or to emigrate. I have recently met people in New South Wales whose ancestors were among these Donegal migrants of 1855.

By 1858, there was mounting concern in Australia about news of increased suffering in Donegal. Landlords were reported to be squeezing Donegal people off the land to make way for more profitable farming procedures or to clear the land for more profitable pursuits such as large-scale sheep-raising, using Scottish shepherds. Clearly there was a need for more help from Australia.

2. The Donegal Relief Fund
In May 1858 a Catholic clergyman, Archdeacon John McEncroe, convened a public meeting in Sydney to form a Donegal Relief Fund. McEncroe, aged 64, was from County Tipperary. He had been in New South Wales for 26 years, watching it evolve from a jail-farm to a colony of free settlers. He was the founder of a periodical newspaper, the Sydney Freeman's Journal. The development of the Donegal Relief Fund may be traced in that paper.

McEncroe sought to make systematic use of the government's assisted immigration scheme. His correspondence and interviews with the government may be traced in reports that were later tabled in Parliament (printed as the Proceedings of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly, 1861-2). According to those documents, McEncroe took a deputation from the Donegal Relief Fund to interview government officials in July 1858. McEncroe gave the government a deposit of 900 pounds, and the government issued a certificate providing passages for 225 people. This special fare to Australia was five pounds per male and three pounds per female. McEncroe made subsequent deposits, bringing the total for 1858 to 3,800 pounds, and the government issued further certificates for passages.

The certificates were issued for persons aged between twelve and forty years. These age restrictions meant that many Irish families were to be torn apart, with older adults and younger children being forced to stay in Ireland.

The Donegal Relief Fund had an agent in Ireland named J.H. Scott Durban. He compiled a list of emigrants who were to be sponsored by the fund. These were chosen chiefly from the districts of Gweedore and Cloughaneely. These were among the most impoverished parts of Ireland. Archdeacon McEncroe, who visited this region in the late 1850s, considered that the agricultural labourers of Gweedore and Cloughaneely had a more miserable existence under the landlord system there than the convicts had experienced under the landed proprietors of New South Wales.

The Donegal Relief Fund also selected some migrants from Tory Island (a Gaelic-speaking community situated thirteen kilometres off the Donegal coast), some from other parts of Donegal and a few from neighbouring counties. The migrants were to travel to Britain and then by sailing ship to Australia.

3. The first four ships
The first batch of Donegal Relief Fund migrants arrived in Sydney from Liverpool in the Sapphire (a ship of 749 tons) on 24 May 1859 after a voyage of 110 days - 15 weeks. The vessel landed 286 passengers (not all sponsored by the Donegal Relief Fund). The sexes were evenly balanced, there being 138 males and 133 females over 12 years, plus eight boys and seven girls under 12 years. They included 42 married couples. There had been four deaths on the voyage, comprising two infants, one young girl and one woman. Two babies were born on the voyage.

A report in the Sydney Morning Herald complained that the passengers could not speak English but the ship's captain replied in the Herald, stating that most spoke English well. The Sydney Freeman's Journal said that 'all the men speak English, more or less perfect, and of the females there are only eleven who cannot do so.'

The second batch of Donegal Relief Fund migrants traveled on the Lady Elma Bruce (966 tons), reaching Sydney from Liverpool on 14 July 1859 after a voyage of 98 days. Because there had been several cases of measles during the passage, the vessel was quarantined in Sydney Harbour for two weeks before being allowed to land passengers. In those days, measles were a dangerous disease. The vessel landed 318 passengers, mostly Irish, including 258 sponsored by the Donegal Relief Fund. There had been one death (a female over 12 years) and two births. The D.R.F. passengers comprised 24 married couples, 94 single men, 91 single women, 15 young boys, seven young girls and three infants.

The third batch traveled on the Caribou (1065 tons), arriving in Sydney from Liverpool on 4 October 1859 after a voyage of 92 days. The ship landed 388 passengers, chiefly for the D.R.F. The 388 comprised 174 men, 168 women, 19 young boys and 27 young girls. They included 45 married couples. There had been three deaths (two boys and a man) and six births.

The arrival of each Donegal Relief Fund ship was reported in the Sydney Freeman's Journal, which recommended the passengers to prospective employers as farm labourers or domestic servants. The New South Wales government encouraged the immigrants, especially the men, to go to 'immigrant depots' in country centres (for example, Maitland, Newcastle and Bathurst), from where they would be hired by landholders.

The Donegal Relief Fund enormously boosted the number of Irish migrants to New South Wales in 1859. According to parliamentary reports, 3,723 immigrants entered New South Wales that year from all sources under government's assistance scheme. Of these, the Irish accounted for 2,544 - that is, more than 68 per cent of the total. The other comprised 941 English (more than 25 per cent) and 238 Scottish (more than 6 per cent). Of the Irish, about one third came under the D.R.F. scheme.

The Donegal Relief Fund continued to raise money during 1860 but sponsored no migrants that year. It asked the New South Wales government for permission to bring more migrants in 1861, and gave the government 1,350 pounds.

The fourth batch of D.R.F. migrants ( 166 persons, largely from Gweedore) traveled on the Nile, arriving in Sydney on 16 may 1861. (The passenger lists of these four D.R.F. ships are all in the New South Wales Archives - microfilms no. 2479 and 2139.

4. The missing village of Derryveagh
The services of the Donegal Relief Fund were again called for after a whole village in County Donegal became homeless in 1861. The village was Derryveagh, situated in central Donegal on the western shore of Gartan Lough, about 25 kilometers inland from the Gweedore/Cloughaneely coast. In the late 1850's Derryveagh and several adjoining estates (Glenveagh and Gartan) had been bought by a new landlord, John George Adair, of Queens County. Adair soon clashed with the native inhabitants of Derryveagh, and in April 1861 he evicted forty-seven families, almost the entire population of the estate. He used a force of two hundred policemen to carry out the evictions and to demolish the cottages. Altogether, about 250 people (half of them 'children of tender age') were thrown out on to the roadside in cold, wet weather.

The news of the Derryveagh evictions caused a stir in Australia, where Donegal relief was now a major concern. Money for the Derryveagh victims was raised in both Sydney and Melbourne as well as in other parts of Australia. The Sydney effort was still headed by Archdeacon McEncroe, while a member of the Victorian parliament named Michael O'Grady (from County Roscommon) was prominent in the Melbourne fund-raising.

So, in January 1862 a group of Derryveagh people sailed from Dublin to England, and then to Australia, through the Donegal Relief Fund. But what part of Australia? One of the best known accounts of the Derryveagh evictions was by A.M. Sullivan, an Irish member of the British Parliament, in Chapter 19 of his book, New Ireland, published in 1877. Sullivan said, rather misleadingly, that the D.R.F. was based in Melbourne, headed by Michael O'Grady. Sullivan said that, thanks largely to Victoria's O'Grady, the Derryveagh people were happily re-settled in their new land. Sullivan neglected to mention McEncroe's Sydney fund-raising. Later writers have been influenced by Sullivan's version and have left their readers with the impression that Derryveagh was transplanted wholly in Victoria.

Interest in the fate of the Derryveagh people has revived in the 1980s because landlord Adair's former home (the Glenveagh estate, adjoining the Derryveagh estate) is now being developed as a major national park. In 1983 I received letters from contacts of mine in Ireland, asking if I could find out what became of Derryveagh 'in Victoria'.

5. The fifth ship
I began by obtaining a list of the forty-seven families evicted in Derryveagh, published in the Irish press in 1861. The recurring surnames were Armstrong, Bradley, Burke, Callaghan, Coll, Conaghan, Coyle, Curran, Dermott, Devenny, Doherty, Doohan, Friel, Gallagher, Kelly, Lawn, McAward, Moore, O'Flanigan, Rodden and Sweeney.

I found no significant cluster of these surnames in the Victorian shipping records of the 1860s, but a search of the New South Wales shipping records in Sydney revealed that dozens of Derryveagh migrants were on the Abyssinian (a ship of 1070 tons), which arrived in Sydney from Plymouth on 29 May 1862 after a voyage of 114 days. The ship's passenger list, completed in Sydney after the voyage, is preserved in the New South Wales State Archives (microfilm no. 2139). The Archives also contain the ship's embarkation list, compiled in Plymouth. According to these documents, the Abyssinian landed 404 immigrants, mostly Irish and mostly unmarried. They included 150 sponsored by the Donegal Relief Fund. The D.R.F. passengers who boarded in Plymouth comprised 68 single men, 70 single women, four married couples and four infants.

There were seven deaths during the voyage, comprising three adults and four infants. Two of the deaths were from bronchitis, two from pleurisy and the others from convulsions, diarrhoea and consumption. Three babies were born during the voyage.

Most of the surnames involved in the Derryveagh evictions of 1861 are well represented on the passenger list, including clusters of each of the following: Armstrong, Bradley, Coll, Conaghan, Coyle, Curran, (Mac)Dermott, Doherty, Friel, Gallagher, Lawn, Rodden, Sweeny and Ward. In addition, there are several dozen other passengers, with different surnames, who cited localities in the Derryveagh district as their birthplace. The handwriting and spelling of many of the birthplaces are unclear but I calculate that perhaps two dozen of the males and two dozen of the females on the Abyssinian came from the Derryveagh district. The remaining Donegal Relief Fund passengers came from Gweedore and Cloughaneely, from other parts of Donegal and from surrounding counties.

The Donegal Relief Fund did not confine its aid to one religious denomination. Under the heading of 'Religion', most D.R.F. passengers on the Abyssinian (especially from Gweedore, Cloughaneely and the Derryveagh area) are listed as 'R.C.', but a significant minority of D.R.F. passengers (from other parts of Donegal) are listed as 'C. of E.' and two as 'Presbyterians'.

The D.R.F. passengers on the Abyssinian were almost all unmarried people, aged between eighteen and twenty-five years. What became of their parents? And their younger brothers and sisters, aged under 18? Did they remain in Ireland? Did they come to Australia later as individual passengers, using money sent home by the emigrants of 1862? Or did they obtain cheaper fares to less remote destinations such as England or America?

After the Derryveagh evictions, residents of the neighbouring Cloughaneely district provided some temporary shelter. According to a tradition in Cloughaneely today, huts for the victims were built near the coast in Killult, a townland on Ballyness Bay near the village of Falcarragh. It would be interesting to know whether any descendants of the Derryveagh victims are still living in Cloughaneely today, but I presume that the biggest numbers of descendants would now be outside Donegal and outside Ireland.

It is interesting that, of the twenty-four married couples on the Abyssinian, only four were sponsored by the Donegal Relief Fund. Of these four D.R.F. families, two evidently came from birthplaces near Derryveagh. One of these couples, James and Mary Doherty, lost an infant daughter, Biddy, who died during the voyage. The other couple, Teague and Hannagh Gallagher, gained a baby son, born during the voyage.

The New South Wales State Archives also contain other papers relating to the Abyssinian, showing where each passenger obtained employment and lodgings. Most of the unmarried women obtained positions as servants in and around Sydney. Most of the males went to country areas as farm labourers. The places listed include Maitland and Singleton (both north of Sydney), Bathurst (in the west) and Berrima, Wollongong and Kiama (all in the south). As the men were now scattered around (and as many could not read or write), they would have found it difficult to maintain contact with each other.

In 1983, after much 'detective work', I located the graves of three of the Abyssinian passengers. James and Mary Doherty are buried at Welby cemetery, near Mittagong, N.S.W. (This is only ten kilometres from Berrima, where, according to the Abyssinian documents, James began working as a farm labourer in 1862.)James and Mary died in 1912 and 1927, aged 84 and 94 respectively. Nearby is the grave of their son, John Doherty, who was two when he arrived on the Abyssinian; he was 74 and he died in 1934. The headstones of these graves are in good condition, with clear inscriptions.

In 1983 I also located and interviewed a daughter of John Doherty. She is Enid Doherty, born in Australia in 1908, now Mrs Taylor, living in Westmead, near Parramatta, Sydney. John Doherty had three sons; these are now dead but their descendants, whom I have contacted in Sydney, tell me that James Doherty on the Abyssinian was one of seven brothers; the other six went to the United States. John Doherty, the two-year-old on the Abyssinian, spent many years as a builder in the outback mining town of Broken Hill, N.S.W.

The Derryveagh exiles of 1862 must have many descendants living in Australia today, including some perhaps living in states other than New South Wales.?

6. Further research
There is scope for other researchers to take up the investigation of the Donegal Relief Fund. For example, I have not ascertained whether the D.R.F. was active in Sydney after 1862 but I know that clusters of Donegal immigrants reached Sydney in later ships, including the Peerless in 1863 and the Montmorency and Montrose in 1864.

The Donegal Relief Fund was not unique. Several similar schemes catered for emigrants from other parts of Ireland in the 1860s. One such fund operated from Brisbane, Queensland, headed by two Irish Catholic clergymen, Bishop James Quinn and Father Patrick Dunne. The first of these ships to Queensland was the Erin-go-bragh in 1862, followed by nine others. Someone remarked that so many Irish migrants went to Queensland under the auspices of Bishop Quinn that the colony could well be re-named 'Quinn's Land'.

[The author gratefully acknowledges research assistance from Mrs Barbara Geary of Canberra, A.C.T. and Mrs Edith Meredith of Bringelly, N.S.W.]

"Republished with kind permission of Dr Bernard Barrett"


To read more articles in the "From Donegal to Australia" series visit http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~d...egal/relief.htm.

ABOUT THE IRISH RECORDS
READ THE PRESS RELEASE
IRISH ARTICLES IN ATAVUS

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ARTICLES FROM PREVIOUS EDITIONS
THE STUDY OF GENEALOGY IN IRELAND
THE GENEALOGICAL OFFICE, DUBLIN CASTLE
IRISH PEERS AND THE HOUSE OF LORDS

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IRISH EXTERNAL LINKS
IRISH CASTLES AND HOMES


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Scots around the world
Australia

Contributed by Mel Stevenson
Australia was fortunate in having a great many Scottish immigants many of whom went on to play a large part in the early formation of the colony. They came from several sources ie the convicts and political prisoners, the service men, some of the early naval and army personel were Scottish, the free immigrants who came to better their life style, these also included those who paid their own way and those who were inticed by free passage in exchange for their labour for a certain period of time and the business men who came here as traders etc.

There was a minister of religion who was instumental in bringing large bodies of Scottish immigrants to Fortitude Valley in Brisbane Queensland around 1850's. Some of these were orphans who were given positions as maids and domestic staff. It was difficult at that time to get good workers particularly for some of the inland properties. All the early settlers came by ship and conditions were pretty bad, many succumbed to diseases on the way over. There are many stories like the one about Thomas Stevenson( no relation)a shepherd from Ayr who came via New Zealand and went on to own a very large property in Boorowa New South Wales. He built up one of the finest flock of Merino sheep in Australia and was well known for improving the breed. He won many prizes for his livestock. He never forgot his homeland though, he sent money home to pay for his mothers headstone and in his will he left money to his widowed sister still living in Ayr. I researched his interesting life for a descendant over there a few years ago and even went to Borrowa to take photos of his grave for her, I think he is a good example of many of the early Scottish migrants to Australia. He came from humble beginnings, he came to work and he stayed because he found opportunities for anyone who was prepared to work hard but he never forgot his homeland.

Find out More
http://www.electricscotland.com/history/wo...d/australia.htm
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Here is another site that I found very informative for looking up Ship Logs.
http://olivetreegenealogy.com/ships/toausp01.shtml

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Chapter 18: Scots Down Under

In addition to Canada, Australia and New Zealand, countries referred to in Britain as "down under" profited enormously from the arrival of Scottish immigrants. Though a great deal of the influence their forbears had on the development of the country has been subsumed under the title British, in the 1990's, almost 14 percent of white Australians claim Scottish descent.

For most of the 18th century, even after the Act of Union in 1707, so much of Scotland's national character, unique social structure (especially in the Highlands) and its economic regionalism survived intact. By the time of the period of emigration, one hundred years later, there had been a great acceleration in Scotland's political, economic and social assimilation into that of Britain as a whole. Scottish attitudes towards the colonies, trade and emigration still differed remarkably from the English. The Scots highly deserve their place of honor in the roll of those who did so much to develop Australia and New Zealand into prosperous, modern states whose sobering influence has added so much to the world in general.

As they did in Canada, the Scots had an enormous influence upon the lands they settled "down under." They filled positions of authority in just about every enterprise they put their minds to. Scotland's loss was the colonies' gain. Their energy, imagination and sheer know-how guided them well in their new homes overseas.

Following the peace of 1815 at the end of the Napoleonic Wars, there was a great increase in the population of the British Isles, so much, so that a feeling of alarm spread through government ranks. A growing population, which had before been regarded as one of the nation's strengths now found itself, looked on as something of a curse. There were simply too many people to feed (and control). Increasing pauperism and distress, along with monstrously bad harvests, massive unemployment and public debt severely strained the limited resources available. Therefore, the folks at Westminster sought drastic remedies.

Perhaps the easiest remedy was emigration. In 1822 James Mills' article on "Colonization" in the "Encyclopedia Britannica" offered emigration as a solution for over-population. It was eagerly read and avidly discussed by M.P.'s such as Robert Horton, who spent quite a few years of his life in the House of Commons trying to convince his colleagues of the merits of his emigration schemes. In the years 1823-25, attempts were made to put his plans into practice, especially because the Government wished to settle British people in new lands that could be contested by other nationalities. Though most of the emigrants chosen for government-assisted passages in these early years were Irish (one way to get rid of those troublesome Catholics) many Scots were attracted by the offers of free land overseas.

Despite its reputation as a penal colony, in the very early years of the 19th century, Australia had begun to appear more and more as a practical proposition for settlement (only three percent of the deported convicts had been Scottish). After the United States had won its independence, Australia slowly began to offer an alternative to the vast wildernesses of loyalist Canada. Attitudes in Parliament began to shift with the publication of Captain Alexander McConochie's recommendation that Britain should look to the Pacific Ocean to expand its commerce. He particularly advocated a settlement of New South Wales that would open up new markets as well as absorb what he termed Scotland's "superabundant population." McConochie's "A Summary View" of 1818 gave the people of power in Scotland, especially those with commercial interests, an awareness of the potential awaiting them in Australia.

Although Tasmania (Van Dieman's Land) was the main destination of the first Scottish emigrants, many also went to New South Wales. The populations of both colonies rose by one third during the 1820's. The advantages of both countries had been published in 1822 in the first book produced in Scotland to deal specifically with Australia, Captain James Dixon's "Narrative," an account of his voyages on the "Skeleton." "If a man must emigrate," he wrote, "Australia is the best quarter he can choose." Of more influence however, was the 1827 publication of Scotsman Peter Cunningham's "Two Years in New South Wales." He painted a picture that was irresistible to many -- a free land with available unpaid convict labor, where a staple export, merino wool, was already developing rapidly.

To Read the rest of this Article please visit this site.

http://www.britannia.com/celtic/scotland/scot19.html


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Welsh Culture in Australia

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The Welsh experience in Australia tends to confirm the view that the Welsh language is a salient feature of Welsh ethnicity. A high proportion of nineteenth century Welsh immigrants spoke Welsh as their first language, including some who spoke only Welsh. As late as 1886, when the Brisbane Cambrian Society successfully requested that the Queensland agent-general in London appoint a Welsh-speaking lecturer, more than half of the Welsh population still spoke Welsh. Immigrants from Wales brought to Australia a popular culture that was expressed through the Welsh language and was rooted in Nonconformism. In this sense, language and religion were inextricably bound together.

In Australia as in Wales, the leaders and patrons of the Welsh communities were also drawn largely from the ranks of chapel ministers or deacons. They were the ones who organised the Cymanfaoedd Canu, the great hymn-singing festivals that are so closely linked with the idea of Wales. In the 1860s and 1870s, the heyday of Welsh settlement in Victoria, it was not unusual for a Cymanfa Canu in Ballarat to last for several days and to draw crowds of 800 or more.


These grand assemblies and many other lesser occasions were invariably organised by the churches. Bewildering in their variety, these occasions are recorded in meticulous detail in the Australydd and other Welsh journals ofthe day- Cyfarfod Te (Tea Meeting), Gobeithlu (Band of Hope), Seiat (Fellowhip Meeting), Cyfarfod Pregethu (Preaching Assembly) and Cymdeithas Lenyddol (Literary Society). To these weekday obligations must be added the rigours of the Nonconformist Welsh Sunday-the prayer meeting for the young in the morning, the morning sermon to follow, Sunday School in the afternoon, the singing meeting at 5 pm and the evening sermon to conclude the day. They were attended in the main by men exhausted from long hours of labour on the diggings or down in the mines.


Of the cultural institutions brought by the Welsh to Australia, it is the Eisteddfod, and the choral singing tradition with which it is associated, that has proved to be the most enduring. A legacy of the late eighteenth century Welsh cultural regeneration, the modern Eisteddfod takes the institutional form of a festival of literary and musical competition. In Australia it had its beginnings in the literary societies that were an early feature of the Welsh cultural scene in Ballarat in the mid-1850s. The first recorded literary gathering (Cyfarfod Llenyddol) took place in that city on Christmas Day, 1855, and by 1857 a Ballarat Welsh Literary Society had been founded. Its activities, of which some record survives, were conducted entirely in Welsh.


By 1863 these proceedings had evolved into a fully fledged Eisteddfod to which, the Australydd tells us, the Welsh of Victoria flocked. Such was its popularity that it quickly gained the status of a 'national' Eisteddfod and, like its counterpart in Wales, rotated annually between several of the larger Victorian towns, including Castlemaine and Melbourne. Yet, like the Welsh periodicals that assiduously reported its program, the Victorian national Eisteddfod was to be short-lived. The last of these events was celebrated in Ballarat in 1869; thereafter, the Eisteddfod in Victoria was principally a local affair. By the 1870s, however, Welsh communities elsewhere in Australia were also holding Eisteddfod activities, although the anglicisation of their proceedings was already in evidence. Yet acculturation was not entirely one-directional, for the modern Australiawide Eisteddfod movement derives from these Welsh beginnings. The Ballarat South Street festivities and the City of Sydney Eisteddfod have, over the years, developed into well-recognised breeding-grounds for talent in music and the arts.


Inevitably perhaps, the assimilation of a geographically dispersed and numerically small Welsh population proceeded apace, with the ageing of a Welsh-speaking first generation who were unable, in the absence of institutional support outside the home, to transmit its values to the second generation. Clearly these values, in Australia as in Wales, were held together by the bond of the Welsh language. As early as 1877 Joseph Jenkins, the Welsh swagman, spurned the Ballarat Eisteddfod because of the predominantly English content of its programs. Similarly, the Welsh-language journals of Victoria -- Yr Australydd and its successor Yr Ymwelydd -- repeatedly bemoaned the rapid assimilation and secularisation of the Welsh in the Australian colonies but themselves fell victims to these forces by the end of the 1870s.


The trend was also visible in the churches. The Welsh Baptists in Australia disappeared as an independent denomination at a very early stage, and well before the end of the century the other denominations had introduced English into their services (English sermons often alternated with Welsh). As in Wales, there were those who sought to stem the English tide by calling for the establishment of a Welsh 'colony", in the belief that Welsh cultural integrity hinged on the possession of a territorial base. Editorials in the Australydd encouraged its readers to found a colony on the Patagonian model and several correspondents suggested suitable localities in Australia and New Zealand. Although approaches were made to the Lands Office, these plans were eventually aborted as the general response from the Welsh community was unenthusiastic.


At the root of this cultural erosion was the desertion of the younger generation indifferent to older values and drawn by peer-group pressures to mainstream culture. In the assimilationist climate of the day, only a steady flow of immigrants from Wales could have compensated for this. But between 1891 and 1947 the number of Welsh-born in Australia stagnated. By the time planned post-War immigration was under way, the threads of continuity with nineteenth century Welsh life had been largely broken. By that time too the proportion of Welsh-speakers amongst the migrant intake from Wales had been greatly reduced.

http://www.lamp.ac.uk/oz/hughes/welshcul.html
There are many more links on this site, go check it out



This Is some of the most facinating stuff I have read in a long time, I am sure many of you would call this dry & Boring but I enjoy it and wanted to share.

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Such a very amazing link!
Thanks you for the post.

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